Oct 15, 2009

The Top 5 Benefits of Email Marketing Campaigns

Email marketing is a great choice for businesses to maximize their advertising dollars while promoting their brand and serving their customers. A smart email marketing campaign can help your business:
  • - Increase Your Sales Conversion
  • - Generate Repeat Sales
  • - Up-sell and Cross-sell Products and Services
  • - Gain Valuable Feedback from your Visitors
  • - Drive Web Users to Make Offline Purchases
1. Increase Your Sales Conversion
Regardless of how good your product or service is, most visitors to your site won't convert into sales on their first visit. In fact, research indicates that it takes the average shopper over 5 visits before they'll make a buying decision. In other words, every effective sales process requires an element of repetition.


Think about the times when you've picked up a new product at the supermarket after seeing it advertised on TV a dozen times. Or a time where you've visited a new local restaurant after driving past it every day on your way to work.
That's repetition in action, but unlike a 'bricks-and-mortar' retail store, there is no 'drive-by' traffic on the Internet. In many cases when someone clicks on the little 'exit' button in the top right hand corner of the screen... they're gone forever.
However if you can get their email address, you get a second chance. You can email them with:
  • - Your monthly newsletter
  • - Your free report
  • - Information about new models
In this way, capturing an email address gives you a 'Plan B' and allows you to follow-up with someone after they've left your website.
2. Generate Repeat Sales
Getting new customers is hard work - it's also really expensive.
In fact, it can be up to eight to ten times more expensive to acquire a new customer than to sell to an existing one. To acquire new customers, you have to factor in the cost of advertising, educating and selling to them.
Therefore, a big chunk of the initial sale is simply recouping the costs you've outlaid to get the customer in the first place.
And while new sales are great, we can't emphasize strongly enough the value of repeat sales. Too often, businesses focus only on the initial sale and forget about the lifetime value of a customer.
Keeping in touch with customers on a regular basis via email allows you to generate repeat sales which can be up to four times more profitable than the initial purchase.
A good email marketing campaign will increase the frequency of repeat purchases from your existing customers.
3. Up-sell and Cross-sell Products & Services
"Would you like fries with that?" Fast food makes billions of dollars every year from this basic up-sell.
When appropriate, email provides a great opportunity for you to up-sell and cross-sell your products and services. After all, give them a chance to say YES to your company.
This basic technique by itself can easily add an extra 30% to your average order value and is used by all major companies online.
4. Gain Valuable Feedback from Your Visitors
Customer feedback is an invaluable tool for any business. This feedback allows you to determine:
  • - What products and services to provide
  • - Who to target
  • - What the market is willing to pay
Email in particular provides your customers with a unique opportunity to give honest feedback. Unlike face-to-face interaction where people can be shy about voicing their true feelings, email allows them to get right to the point.
By using email as a feedback tool you can adapt to what the market wants and improve your business.
5. Drive Web Users to Make Offline Purchases
Surprisingly, email marketing is often a catalyst for web users to go and make a purchase offline. When surveyed, 59% of email users said that they have made a purchase offline after receiving an email promotion.
Why? Sometimes a user will find something they want online but they need it straight away and can't afford to wait for delivery. Other times, the product might need to be demonstrated (like a treadmill) and they want to see, touch and feel the item.
If you run a conventional offline business you can use email marketing to drive foot traffic through your door.
~~~
Let Promise Productions develop and send email marketing blasts to keep your brand visible and profitable. Call 972-822-3587 for professional results.

No comments: